Group renews efforts to remove more Confederate symbols in New Orleans
21st August 2017 · 0 Comments
Take ‘Em Down Nola, one of the groups that spearheaded efforts to rid the City of New Orleans of Confederate statues, street names, school names and other institutions that promote white supremacy and slavery, renewed its demands Thursday for the Landrieu administration to remove more of these oppressive symbols in New Orleans.
While the group has identified more than 130 symbols of white supremacy and pro-slavery sentiment that need to be removed, on Thursday it focused on 13 statues in New Orleans that the City should immediately begin taking steps to remove, including the iconic statue of President Andrew Jackson, which is located in the heart of the famed French Quarter.
Jackson, a slaveowner who promoted the mass extermination of Native Americans and robbed the indigenous people of their ancestral lands, was honored by the City of New Orleans for his victory in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.
Last year, Take Em Down Nola led a march and protest from Congo Square to Jackson Square during which some of its members and residents tried to physically pull down the statue of Jackson on horseback. A heavy contingent of police and barricades prevented them from doing so, and seven people were arrested during the protest.
Take Em Down Nola is asking the New Orleans City Council to pass an ordinance mandating the removal of any monuments that honor slave owners and the renaming of streets, schools, parks or other institutions that honor them.
The Council voted 6-1 to remove the Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard and Battle of Liberty Place monuments in December 2015 after a series of town hall meetings but Councilmembers Stacy Head and LaToya Cantrell said the monuments were not an issue in New Orleans until Mayor Mitch Landrieu made it an issue.
In the end, Councilwoman Head cast the only dissenting vote against removing the four Confederate-era monuments.
The mayor initially promised to establish a panel to determine what other monuments should be removed or relocated from public spaces but later said he only planned to take down the four monuments.
Take Em Down Nola on Thursday announced a “Charlottesville solidarity” march on Saturday, Aug. 19, from Congo Square to Jackson Square.
When asked last week about President Donald Trump’s defense of Confederate monuments, Take Em Down Nola founder Malcolm Suber said, “I think the president has declared himself the president of the Confederacy.”
The announcement of a “new legal development” regarding the City of New Orleans’ removal of the P.G.T. Beauregard Equestrian Statue at the entrance of City Park this past spring was abruptly canceled without explanation, according to a WWL News story that aired Tuesday morning.
Before Tuesday’s news, the impending announcement was described as a “significant update” about the statue that was taken down on May 17.
The statue of Confederate Gen. P.B.T. Beauregard was one of four monuments removed from public spaces in New Orleans earlier this year. The others were the Battle of Liberty Place monument, which commemorated an attempt by white supremacists to overthrow the integrated local government during Reconstruction, and statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
The four monuments are being housed in a New Orleans-owned tract of land in the Ninth Ward until a new home for them can be found.
No reason was given for the cancellation of the announcement and a new date and time have not been provided.
Richard Marksbury, a Tulane University professor and member of the Beauregard Monument Association, wads expected to make the announcement about the future of the Beauregard statue before the press conference was canceled.
Although there had been discussions about moving the Beauregard statue to Greenwood Cemetery, it does not appear that a final decision has been made yet. Monument supporters have questioned whether the City of New Orleans owns the land upon which the Beauregard statue sat before its removal three months ago.
Although the City of New Orleans has solicited proposals for groups seeking to relocate the other three Confederate-era monuments, there appears to have been very little progress made in determining the fate of the Lee, Davis and Battle of Liberty Place monuments.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the deadly clash between monument supporters and opponents in Charlottesville, VA, some have questioned how the City of New Orleans and the NOPD were able to avoid a similar violent eruption.
At the center of the dispute in Charlottesville was the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which ended when a white supremacists drove his car into the crowd of anti-protesters, killing a young woman and wounding 20 others.
Although white supremacists from several surrounding states flocked to New Orleans to protest the removal of the four monuments and there was a media report about a white supremacist sucker-punching a Black man at the Jefferson Davis monument, the Crescent City somehow managed to avoid the senseless violence and bloodshed that took place in Charlottesville on Aug. 12.
With white supremacists in New Orleans toting Confederate flags and assault rifles and spirited debates from those on both sides of the issue, a group of Black protesters attempting to physically remove the Andrew Jackson statue in the French Quarter, documented threats from monument supporters and police snipers perched above the monuments, the potential for major violence was there but never really came to fruition.
Looking back on those tumultuous times in New Orleans, NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison told WWL that the goal was safety of citizens and police. There was a lot of preplanning and meetings with those on both sides.
“While the ‘Take ‘Em Down’ side was open for me to meet with them—I met with them right here in this office on multiple occasions—we tried to reach out to the other side, but it wasn’t as successful,” Harrison said.
The police chief said that expectations and consequences of breaking the law, were clearly laid out.
“And so when we got out there, we would pass literature out to both sides, here’s what the law says about carrying weapons, here’s what the law says about wearing a mask,” he explained.
Barricade design was strategic, keeping the sides separate, but allowing space for police to step in between if they needed to arrest someone or help the injured. Street barricades were more substantial, Harrison recalled last week.
“We used hardened barricades, like big trucks and other hardened pieces of machinery, to block streets so that we couldn’t have someone driving a car into a crowd, at least from that direction,” Harrison said.
Intelligence and threat gathering with the FBI joint terrorism task force and Louisiana State Police dictated strategy and even dress code. They wore regular uniforms, but were ready to go with riot gear.
“Our intelligence officers were always monitoring social media, along with the state police fusion center, the FBI monitoring social media,” Harrison said.
Two NOPD lieutenants were reportedly sent to the 2015 Baltimore rioting to see first hand what worked and what did not, bringing back valuable information.
“They went to every command briefing. They were on the front lines for a week. They came back with the benefit of the knowledge, what happened there, what worked, what didn’t work,” Harrison said.
And New Orleans culture gives NOPD more experience handling crowds. There are second lines 39 Sundays out of the year. Mounted and motorcycle officers most likely get more training than any other department in the U.S. and that’s in thick, dense Mardi Gras crowds and the rain, unlike others.
Think of the quick planning for Lombardi Gras and the NBA All Star game. The chief says “That’s just what we do. We’re the special-event capital of the world.”
During the interview, Harrison did not talk about the Texas-based security group the City of New Orleans hired to ensure the safety of protesters, residents and workers, but Take ‘Em Down Nola hosted a press conference on the steps of City Hall this summer during which it accused the security company of using spy tactics similar to those used by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, whose COINTELPRO initiative spied on Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., SNCC, SCLC, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and other Black leaders during the Historic Civil Rights Movement.
Take ‘Em Down Nola members said the security company hacked its computers and its website.
During an impromptu press conference Tuesday, President Donald Trump weighed in on the issue of Confederate monuments.
Trump pointed out that some of those who attended the Aug. 12 protest in Charlottesville did so to speak out against the removal of the Robert E. Lee monument there, not to promote white supremacy.
“You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of – to them – a very, very important statue and the renaming of Robert E Lee Park to another name,” President Trump said. “You’re changing history, you’re changing culture and you have people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazi’s and white nationalists – because they should be condemned totally, but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists and the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
President Trump’s full statement on the removal of Confederate monuments is as follows:
“You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of – to them – a very, very important statue and the renaming of Robert E Lee Park to another name,
“George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So, will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson, do you like him? Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now are we going to take down his statue?
So, you know what? It’s fine.
“You’re changing history, you’re changing culture and you have people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists – because they should be condemned totally, but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists and the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
“Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had trouble makers and you see them coming with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats and you’ve got a lot of bad people in the other group too.”
This article originally published in the August 21, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
